I am taking 4 courses in this semester. 3 of them require assignments submitted as websites. I have to make 3 websites and maintain 1 blog in total. Am I really taking an English major programme? Or I have become a computer student? The answer from an instructor is that it is not enough to have a good command of English nowadays. The advancement of technology has affected the course structures already. Technology controls not only individuals but the world.
Do we control technology? Yes.
Human being creates technology to make our lives convenient. People do not want to walk so many levels of floor everyday, so there is the invention of elevator. People do not want to wash the clothes by hands, so there is the invention of washing machine. Human invented vehicle, cook, stove, etc to help us perform different tasks that we should have done by our hands and spent much time.
Thanks for being lazy. And, I am lazy too.
Frankly speaking, I think most clever inventions are created because of human's laziness. We are lazy so we create something that can help us. Day after day, we are used to the technology. Technology is inseparable from our lives. Here is a video showing us technology is immerse in the whole world:
We have built up a set of presuppositions about the world around us. This semester, one of the courses does not provide any powerpoint notes, just like what is mentioned in the reading this week. It is really a challenge for me to jog down every main point during the lessons without a note to refer to. There are students who ask for notes in different formats every lesson. Finally, I solve the problem by technology and I found that some other students are doing the same; we take photos of the screen because we are so lazy that we don't want to or are not able to copy the content.
I think the affordance of camera also constraint our ability of recording information. When there were no cameras, people drew and wrote to record. Now, people draw because of art but not recording. People write less because we can take photos, copy and print. There are fewer people who are good at drawing and writing fast.
Things changed but human beings are still lazy. It may be good because it means we will have more fantastic inventions in the future to make our lives even more convenient!
3 comments:
I totally agree with what you said about human are lazy! Originally, people invent different technologies just to make our lives more convenient, but it turned out we all become lazy because of that.
And since I take Language and Digital Media, I realized that everything around me is about technologies and how the world is dominant by technology. Now that we can't actually live without technologies, so let's make good use of it!!
I realize that the course structure and requirement change this semester. They require multimodal assignment which not only require a good command of English (texts), but also require images, videos and hyperlinks etc. This really shows how technology controls us in academic or even working area. You think that is good to have all these inventions for lazy human being, do you worry about that people will become too lazy and only rely on technology in the future？
Hi Kay, your post is so interesting and reflexive. If I attend the courses without powerpoint provided, I think I will bring my laptop with me on that particular lecture, to record down main points and ideas of the lesson, instead of writing on a paper with pencils and pens, way too slow and I am too lazy to write for three hours lecture...
Once more, digital devices make our life easier to deal with problems! =)
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